In Moment of Crisis, River Hero Took the Plunge

Kristen Kroonenberg and Bailey Roberts, in a photo taken on their late May 2008 trip to the Potholes swimming area in western Colorado. "20/20" recently returned to the site with the five friends who survived the day, to talk about what happened, and how their lives have changed since.

There is a place deep in the canyonlands of western Colorado, high on a rugged plateau that stretches to the Utah border, that only the locals know about.

In this place, frigid mountain streams have carved out a playground of waterfalls and pools to swim in. It's called the Potholes, for the many deep pools created over millennia by the pounding current.

"Three hundred days out of the year it could be the safest place in the entire world," said Aaron Ingels, now 23, who made a fateful trip with friends to the Potholes just over a year ago. "But on that very day ... it's not a safe place."

"He was able to fight her back through the current to me," Ingels said. "I grabbed her and pulled her out to the side of me. And then at that point I turned to go and reach for him and he had been sucked back into the back of the hole."

In water so cold, every second steals your strength. Burns' friends held out a stick for him to grab, but it was just beyond his reach.

River Hero: He Didn't Want Us to See

"And he pushed off the wall twice, and he just didn't have enough strength," Ingels said. "His body had gotten too cold at that point.

"He started facing that wall and he didn't look at us. I think he realized that he wasn't making it out of there and he didn't want us to have to see it."

The current eventually washed Burns' body over a waterfall, and into the arms of his friends.

"We had him in the sun," Ingels said. "And I started doing CPR on him the best I knew how."

Megan Voorhorst said, "I laid on top of him to try to give him some body heat, and Kristen [Kroonenberg] was rubbing his feet. All of us were screaming at him, telling him, 'Talk to us.'"